Love, and Other Mistakes
by Dreaming of Everything
Summary: Hanako is in love with Kagome who is, unfortunately for her, in love with Inuyasha. She's also straight, which really isn't helping. InuyashaxKagome, onesided OCxKagome.
1. Realization

**Love and Other Mistakes**

**Chapter One: Realization**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Inuyasha. Hanako, on the other hand, is of my own creation. Yes.

**A/N:** I do hope you will all give this a chance, despite the fact that this is an OC, and female at that, meaning there's a terrible threat of Mary-Suedom. I've done my best to _not_ do that, of course, and think I have succeeded fairly well. There will only be one-sided Canon characterxOC in this fic, and even then only on the side of the OC. The main pairing will be Inuyasha/Kagome, and if you can't deal with that, please leave.

I've always believed in one-true-loves. At least, I believed in _my_ one-true-love.

Her name was Kagome. She was gorgeous: long, wavy black hair, blue-gray eyes and a great smile. That's what I remember most—she was always smiling.

It's funny, isn't it? How I talk about her as if she's dead? She isn't, of course. She's as alive as any of us, but not as easy to contact. It's a funny story, actually.

But I forget that you don't know who I am. My name, as generic as the rest of me is, is Yoshida Hanako, and I'm about the same age as Kagome, sixteen. I have straight black hair just past my shoulders and dark brown eyes, making me as ordinary as paint. Completely unextraordinairy, to look at, at least. In reality, there are two things that separate me from the rest of the thousands of Japanese schoolgirls who otherwise could, more or less, be me.

The first, the simpler one, is that I am a homosexual. A lesbian. I am a girl, but I love other girls, and not in a sisterly way. Nobody beyond my family knew, of course, it wasn't something you told people, and I had never had many close friends. I did have _friends_, of course, I wasn't that divorced from reality! But I wasn't a socialite, and I was never one of those people who confided my secrets in others. There was always too much potential for things to go wrong.

I'm sure several people (though never Kagome herself, thank goodness!) knew of my... Well, obsession is probably the best word for it. I was as subtle as I could be, but you can only do so much. At least they all assumed that I just respected her, looked up to her. That made sense; Kagome got good grades, had three close friends, and boys had been noticing her since she was twelve. About the age I noticed her, actually, although back then I didn't recognize my crush for what it was. I had just assumed that I wanted to be her friend. It hadn't worked, of course, or things would have happened very differently.

Even back then she was already friends with Eri, Yuka and Ayumi, and the four of them were too close for a fifth. I was a the fifth wheel, and quickly gave up. Kagome was nice, if distant, but the antagonism of Eri, Ayumi and, to a lesser extent, Yuka, was too much.

Still, the attraction didn't go away. I eventually realized I was in love. That had been startling to realize—suddenly everything that had made me stand out, feel somehow flawed, had a name. I wasn't the only one, I wasn't uniquely defective. Those moments when I thought that I was the only one, because I was the only one in the class who never talked about which boy I wanted to date, and who I thought my first kiss would be with, were some of the most frightening of my life, even now. Even with what happened.

Which brings me to the other detail that separated me from my peers. This is actually a much longer story, one best told from the beginning. Actually, you've already heard the _very_ beginning, the prologue, if you will.

I was in love with Kagome for years before things started to change. It started with a few absences, explained as an illness or two by her grandfather. That wasn't out of the ordinary, even if it wasn't completely normal. As time passed on though, and she remained absent for a week or more, and then weeks, and the illnesses used to explain her absences got stranger and stranger—she had AIDS one week, and the next leukemia, with scurvy in-between—it became painfully obvious that she wasn't actually sick, and her grandfather (who might have been a touch on the senile side) was covering for something else. Because I loved Kagome, deeply and with all my heart, I was already interested, but this new mystery only added fuel to the fire.

Even odder was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed something off about the string of 'illnesses' that caused her absences. While it was understandable that most of the class had no interest in her beyond knowing who she was, you'd think they'd notice when the same student is diagnosed with whooping cough and then debilitating athlete's foot. I mean, I _know_ at least one of them is planning to become a doctor. Didn't they notice anything wrong?

And then there were her friends, Eri, Ayumi and Yuka. Shallow and gossip-minded as they were (and I would be the first to tell you that) they honestly cared for Kagome, or at least I thought they did. Could they truly be that blind? It was stunning, and rather horrifying.

Hojo _definitely_ cared about Kagome, to the point where it was unhealthy. It's actually understandable, considering it's _him_ we're talking about, that he honestly didn't realize there was something off about the whole thing; Hojo's basically a human Irish setter, slavishly devoted to his "owner" and hanging on her every word, but not much in the brains or common-sense department, and with selective hearing and eyesight. It was fairly obvious, even to someone who _didn't_ have a lot invested in their relationship (which I did) that she was merely giving him token affection out of a sense of duty or pity, but certainly didn't see him as a love interest.

Ayumi, Yuka and Eri, of course, all had crushes on Hojo, to a certain degree, and were intensely happy that he had asked Kagome out. They viewed him as the penultimate boyfriend: a human Irish setter. More than a bit depressing, really. I was happy that Kagome showed no signs of returning Hojo's affections.

Then things changed for the worse. She started talking about a new boyfriend, a pig-headed jerk who never listened to her and was about as sensitive to her feelings as a rock. Despite all that, she seemed more-or-less in love with him, something the always-clueless trio was either unaware of or pointedly ignoring. She'd talk with him on the few days she wasn't sick, or rather, should I say, "sick," because she was far too healthy for someone with TB, meningitis and heart palpitations who was recovering from surgery for internal reconstruction, whatever that was. During that period of time, I regularly wondered if someone in their family was a hypochondriac. It would have explained a lot.

But I'm side-tracking. It's still strange to talk about, even later, and it's still hard to tell what was important, and what wasn't, what makes so much more sense now and what I'm still not sure of; what seems important but really isn't. It's odd.

It really broke my heart when I realized she was in love, and with a boy. There was still a chance she liked my _gender_, at least, but the odds of her liking other girls had plummeted from since when she had shown no interest in Hojo, or any other boy, for that matter, something that had made me deliriously happy. Here she was, now, happily in love, and with a guy, a male of the species, who was a jerk of the first water as well. My heart felt like it was tearing when I saw that, beneath the anger and the impatience and the self-righteous indignation that poured out of her when she talked about him, she loved him.

She loved him. I believed in one-true-loves, and Kagome had found hers, and it wasn't me.

It took a day and a half to sink in, and when it finally did I went home early, after explaining that I was feeling the onset of the measles, and wanted to be home before it got worse. It worked for Kagome, and it worked for me; I made it home quickly and spent the next two days crying over my desk, spotting the papers littering it—the detritus of a school project on Japan's religious history—with tears. My mother, understanding, quietly left plates of food just inside my door, probably remembering her own teenage years. My father was unsure of the situation, tip-toeing around my room as if his very presence would set off a crying, teenage-girl hormone bomb. My older brother was completely clueless, even beyond what's normal, and even considering that he was nearly never at home, always off with his friends.

It was at the end of that second day that it happened. When a plate slipped from my hands, crashing against my desk, I reached over to pick up the pieces and accidentally cut myself, a long, thin shallow cut that bled dramatically, not really hurting. The blood dripped from my hands onto the tear-wet papers on my desk, falling onto an old charm, one I found going through our family files, I was using for my project. My heart ached with sorrow and a stubborn refusal to admit the truth.

Magical energy swirled around me, painful. I remember screaming, and then green.

**A/N:** This is a threeshot, meaning that there will be three chapters. Hopefully. Though my one-shots tend to expand into five-chapter-long fics, and my five-chapter long fics into ten chapters, and thank God I have never attempted anything longer than that. Yet.


	2. Meetings

**Love and Other Mistakes: Meetings**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer:** While Inuyasha is a figment of someone else's imagination and the property of several others, Hanako is a figment of my own. Mind, that is.

**Author's Notes:** Hah. No reviews—at all. (Nobody loves me!) Well, I do suppose it's an OC-fic, setting off a lot of Mary-Sue radars, and then it involves shoujo-ai, never popular in the first place. Oh well. But please, if anybody is reading this, at all, at least tell me you have. No really—it makes me feel better.

oOoOoOo

My first impression was of green. It took me a few minutes to connect that with tree leaves, and the fact that I was lying flat on my back and looking up at a forest. The slightly dizzying quality was the sunlight streaming through the canopy, staining the light green. It might also be the fact that I had passed out on my desk, presumably, and was now waking up (or dreaming I was waking up) and hallucinating.

Because I was in a forest. A big one. Nothing but trees as far as I could see, which, admittedly, wasn't far, because of the aforementioned trees. Still, I was marginally sure that it was so big, far bigger than any park. I couldn't hear any traffic from surrounding streets, there were no paths, or even signs of anyone passing through the area any time recently, and the trees were all old, maybe even older than I was.

I was _sooo_ tired. I should have been panicking, but, for some reason, I wasn't. It was as if some syrupy calm had settled over me. Vaguely I wondered if this was what shock felt like. And seriously, where the hell was I?

Figuring I might as well stand up and take a look around, I struggled to my feet. I was still wearing my school uniform, which was strikingly unpleasant; it was slightly damp in places from tears and creased and wrinkled all over from the unhappy little ball I had curled up into. And revealing, but that was nothing new. I really wonder about whoever designed the uniforms for our school, and even more about whoever approved them.

I randomly chose a direction and struck out. I mean, there was no reason to just stay where I was, especially since I was hallucinating. There was no way this was real, none at all… I had probably just gotten really dehydrated from all that crying and passed out. I didn't _think_ I had lost all that much blood when I had cut myself, but that might have added to the affect as well, I supposed.

The silence was starting to get on my nerves—there had been a few birds chirping when I had first started to swim back to consciousness (or the unconscious-and-hallucinating dream-version of consciousness) but they were silent now, and even the slight breeze had died, making things eerily silent. To sum things up: creepy. Weren't forests supposed to have happy woodland animals like bunnies and birds and deer, doing things like frolicking happily?

A sudden rustle to the side made me freeze, staring quickly in that direction—I have no doubt my eyes were wide with fright. I saw nothing and slowly began to move again, but the sudden noise had startled me and my veins were humming with adrenaline, putting me on guard, looking around me and startling every so often. Later I would realize how utterly futile my actions were. (Although I was buzzing with nervous tension, there was still that strange sticky-sweet calm pressing down on me, keeping my mental reaction, as opposed to my physical reaction, suppressed. It would have worried me, but I wasn't worrying at all. Because of it. Which is slightly scary now, looking back. Kind of like the end-all be-all of mind control.)

The actual attack came from above and behind. When it came I was looking forward and slightly to the right, ironically, not that knowing that it was coming would have made any difference. I mean, the thing was a goddamn _dragonfly_ the size of a small car and covered in these grasping, pinching, acid-oozing tentacle-spine-pincher things, not to mention it's normal claw-mouth, which was multiplied by three. It could have been an amalgamation of any number of (highly imaginative) small children's worst nightmares. Actually, I have no way to prove that it wasn't.

I started screaming, naturally, both because of it's appearance and because it had gone through my _shoulder_ (or, at that size, my entire right side,) but the heavy-golden-syrup feeling was back even stronger, and I couldn't feel anything, I was **dying**. Thank God it was a hallucination... That was the one coherent thought I managed, or at least that I remember, and it kept on repeating, over and over, like some sort of protective mantra.

I could still feel my shoulder. At least, my hands had feeling and they were telling me that my still-numb shoulders were both still there.

The thing had slid to a stop on a branch near-by, the limb bowing and creaking under it's weight. I have no idea how a tentacled (or should that be tentacle-clad? Or tentaclad for short,) dragonfly managed to look furiously confused, but it managed it, presumably because I wasn't a bleeding, oozing lump of raw, flayed flesh like I _should_ have been.

Actually, I was wondering the same thing.

I looked curiously at my hands, as if a second inspection would show the bloody stump I expected, but found nothing. I continued to stare blankly at it for a few more minutes before realizing that, faintly, I could see the ground. Through my arm.

It was about then that my long-overdue panic attack hit. Complete with gulping sobs and panicked hyperventilation (coupled with the realization that I no longer really needed to breathe, which only made things worse) and nervous shaking as I pulled myself into a twitching, sobbing fetal position right there on the ground, nestled in with leaves and grass and no doubt slugs and other gross slimy things, beneath the watchful eyes of the creepy tentacle-dragonfly. I did react to the slugs, at least, a few minutes later when I had recovered. By then the dragonfly-thing had flown off, having managed to reconfigure me into 'not food,' one of three categories in its (severely limited) worldview. (For the record, the other two categories were 'food' and 'potential mates.' These three categories are basic for anything from goldfish to teenage boys, including creepy tentacle-dragonflies.)

On reflection, of course, it was a great stroke of luck: since I wasn't actually there, in the normal sense of the word, I couldn't be turned into hamburger by whatever demons happened to be passing by. It was definitely the only reason I survived my time in the Feudal Era. At all.

I still recovered surprisingly quickly. And there was definitely some weird side-effect of losing your body in effect, because I just wasn't panicking the way I should have been. True, that had happened when I realized I was intangible, but it had been short-lived

So I'm complaining loudly about the slug goop stuck to the inside of my thigh when Kagome shows up, near-abusive new boyfriend and entourage in tow. My heart plummets and then races and then somehow manages to do both at the same time, which is pretty normal for when I'm around her, and my mind starts thinking, 'well, the odds that this is a weird, heartbreak-induced daydream just soared,' and another part of me is going 'whoah, a guy with doggy ears is giving her a piggyback ride. Lucky devil.'

I manage a "Whaaat?" that even sounded incoherent to me at the time.

"Hanako?" Kagome managed to gasp out, looking pretty startled.

"Shit! How the hell'd she get here? I didn't smell her at all!" yells Silver-Hair.

"Hey," I interject mildly, largely because I'm confused, getting the vague sense that I'm being insulted.

Now he's sniffing at me. The shocky part of my mind is throwing warped dog references at me—the last thing I need.

They both look pretty concerned when I start laughing, a little hysterically, I must admit. Maybe I wasn't as calm as I thought…

And then I pass out again. Lovely. At least it gave me less time to make a total fool of myself in front of my love…

oOoOoOo

I came to much more slowly the second time around, without nearly so much panic. It helped that Kagome was there waiting for me, with answers.

Yes, the answers were of particular help, seeing as it meant I got at least a few things straightened out.

Such as why I was an insubstantial ghost somewhere _most_ definitely not anywhere I was used too.

Answers were definitely good at that point, even if I didn't particularly like them.

**A/N:** And another (not quite) cliffhanger, because this is where this chapter decided to end itself. If anyone's still reading, there will be another to this fic, for a total of three, before it is well and truly finished. The next one might be slightly longer than the previous two (hopefully **not** the previous two combined, but you never know) and then this will be over.

Review? Please? All of the cool kids are doing it. But that's a lie.


	3. Dealing

**Love and Other Mistakes**

**Chapter Three: Dealing**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer:** Nothing related to Inuyasha is mine, but Hanako is my own creation. I'm rather fond of her, although not too many other people seem to be. Isn't that always the case with OFC? I also don't own the poem I have included here, which was written by Emily Dickinson, who I am _not_.

**Author's Notes:** I have wonderful reviewers. Thanks so much, TheUniverseBeyond and Senkoed!

oOoOoOo

"We outgrow love like other things  
And put it in the drawer,  
Till it an antique fashion shows  
Like costumes grandsires wore."

--Emily Dickinson

oOoOoOo

So, basically, I was trapped in the Feudal Era because my blood and tears had mixed on a bunch of old charms that had _just_ enough spark to send my spirit crashing through a few centuries to reconnect me to my One True Love—and before you ask, even _I'm_ not sure whether or not I'm being sarcastic when I say that.

It was surprises all round, that particular discussion was. Firstly: **Feudal **Era Seriously.

Secondly: Kagome had been pulled through time via a magical ancient well located on the shrine her family had been caring for over generations, only to find that she's the reincarnation of a dead priestess that a half-dog-demon was in love with who was jilted because the priestess thought he had attacked her because of an evil not-quite-demon previously-human bandit had some sort of fixation on her so the half-demon thought she had betrayed _him_ and they ended up fighting, the demon ending up 'sealed' and the priestess dead and burned with this all-powerful jewel which ended up coming out of Kagome when she was cut once she ended up in the Feudal Era, and then it ended up broken and Kagome ended up unsealing the dog demon her previous incarnation had been in love with and loved by, who thought he had been betrayed by her, and eventually the jewel ended up broken and now Kagome and the demon and a demon hunter and a cursed monk and a fox demon are trying to track down the shards of the jewel before the demon-thing who made the half-demon and Kagome's past self kill each other does, or Kagome's previous incarnation—who's been reanimated—does or a nearly numberless host of other, lesser demons does. (Give me a pause for breath here.)

Yeah, that explanation didn't really clear up all that much. So much for that…

My own explanations had been difficult as well.

I mean, I certainly wasn't going to explain to her that she was my soul mate, was I?

Especially not with the half-demon-guy—the one with the ears, Inuyasha—glaring at me like he would kill me if a) Kagome wouldn't kill him for it and b) I were tangible and capable of being harmed.

Actually, that last bit was excellent for more reasons that just that it would prevent Kagome's traveling companions try to kill me: it meant that nothing else could kill me, and that meant that Mr. Demonic-and-grumpy would allow me to come along, because apparently it meant that I "wasn't another useless lump that needed protecting" when it came to fighting and battlefields. I mean, I was useless, but since nothing could hurt me it really didn't matter all that much.

Well, since Kagome could apparently shoot purifying holy arrows, and she was the other 'useless lump,' I certainly didn't have a hope of proving even marginally useful, but I'd definitely settle for being totally uninvolved. Especially since it meant being with Kagome.

She was still… Incredibly beautiful. I'm not going to lie to you there. And being there was my second-best dream come true, even if my (pretty excellent) imagination hadn't come up with all the details of the real event, like the feudal era setting. Like the angry demon pretty-boy with enviable hair.

Oh, yes, Inuyasha. He was, apparently, the Jerkface Boyfriend of legend—okay, rumor—I had overheard the Terrible Trio (or Eri, Yuka and Ayumi, if you wanted to be _polite_ about things) talking about, and it was all true, and then some.

He was rude, insensitive, crude and demanding, wild, condescending and unreasonable, impatient and obsessed, and possessive to boot—just to start to cover things. For the life of me, I couldn't even begin to see what Kagome saw in him, let alone that she seemed to think that he might like her _back_.

And there was something **else** going on there, of course, because heaven forbid **anything** be that simple in this new world I had suddenly been plunged into.

To be precise, Inuyasha had apparently been "close" to the previous incarnation of Kagome, and the "close" was the sort of "close" that was whispered about loudly in school hallways. The sort of "close" that could keep the rumor mill going full-bore for _weeks_, which is several minor eternities in terms of both gossip and high school.

And, as previously mentioned, she had been brought back from the dead, but Kagome was still there, and they were kinda-sorta racing her for the shi-whatever gem shards, but Mr. Jerkface apparently still had a thing for her, and it may or may not have transferred to Kagome because she's apparently close enough to Dead Killer Girlfriend for his standards, or something.

So yeah. In terms of good matches? Jerkface was the total opposite, in every way imaginable. I was heartbroken she liked him, of course, but the fact that he was doing her so much harm—and it would only get worse, I was sure—was even worse. How couldn't she see how _bad_ he was for her? It was painful.

On the other hand, my mind kept showing a repeat clip of Eri, Yuka and Ayumi's reactions if they ever found out that Mr. Jerkface—okay, **Inuyasha**—was a demon. It was _hilarious_.

…I was still in shock, wasn't I? Not that I don't think that it's hilarious now, of course.

oOo

Basically, we traveled around and hit everything that attacked us and most of the things that attacked other people, all the while looking for Shikon shards. Fun, right? Yes, and even more so than it sounds, for the record. It was bad enough for me, but I can't imagine what it was like for Kagome, who needed sleep and food (which I didn't) and who could get hurt (which I couldn't) and who slogged through the mud and brambles every day (which I did too, but I couldn't get covered in mud, and I didn't have muscles to get tired or sore. The drops fell through me when it rained.)

So it was like high school, really, only more mobile and slightly less bloodthirsty. Approximately the same number of psychotic demons out for your blood. (And bones, and liver, and meat, and brains… Let me tell you, being intangible was _really, really comforting._)

In some ways, though, it was worse. Because Kagome apparently loved Inuyasha, something that was totally incomprehensible to me.

I did mention the jerkishness, right?

And it was weird—I think he honestly liked her, too. Maybe. There was still the whole history between the two of them, plus Kagome's previous incarnation. But… There was this _thing_ they'd do—

—or things, plural. They yelled, and fought, and snapped, but neither was ever really **angry** at the other. Or, they were angry, but not in a way that really meant anything. And Inuyasha didn't listen, but he would, when it mattered, and when he didn't it was almost as if he was _sorry_ about it. And Kagome would complain, but it was clear that she trusted him, fully and deeply, even though there was the enchanted necklace—absolutely hilarious, for the record—to supposedly 'keep him in control,' although the most she ever used it as was a way to win whatever top-of-their-lungs screaming match they were in. And Inuyasha would complain about her leaving again, but it was almost like he would miss her—and apparently he sat by the enchanted well she time-traveled with while she was gone, waiting and guarding it. And Kagome would brought instant ramen for him to eat, and complained about the weight of the backpack because of it, and sometimes Inuyasha would carry it for her.

And all the while, he managed to be an out-and-out _asshole_.

It wasn't love like I'd imagined, or read about. It wasn't like love at all, really, but it was even less like hate, or annoyance, or even a strange sort of combative tolerance. It was more like love than any of those…

But it wasn't what I'd imagined caring about someone could look like. And I didn't know how Kagome could **do** it—How she could spend time with somebody who grated on every nerve ending I had, and most of hers, somebody who might not love her and wouldn't even admit to _liking_ her in a totally platonic, non-romantic way, somebody who was still mostly in love with a soulless, reanimated incarnation of who her soul was 500 years ago, and who wouldn't pick one way or another.

She loved him, almost definitely, although she wasn't admitting to anything, and I just didn't understand how she could do it in the face of such adversity.

Sure, I'd loved her in the face of staggering odds—hell, her sexuality alone was enough to knock me out of the running. But it had been the sort of love that was—easy, almost.

Because I _knew_ I didn't have a snowball's chance. I'd dream, imagine, and I _knew_ that we would be perfect together, but I also knew, had, in a way, always known, that nothing would ever happen. We weren't even friends, barely acquaintances, she was almost always gone and had a mystery boyfriend along with the ever-devoted Hojo. We were in high school, even—hardly the regular birthplace of lasting relationships of the average heterosexual type, let alone the lesbian-flavored variety.

It still hurt, but I couldn't imagine what it would have been like if she had liked someone exactly like me, given up on that girl if she moved, say, then returned her affections to her, to a certain extent, when she came back changed, and never really made a decision either way, and behaved in some ways that said _I hate you_ and in others that said _I like you_ and in others that said _I love you_, and never any indication of what kind of hate and like and love—hate like a sibling, or a mortal enemy, and love like a sister, a mother, a friend or a lover, like as in friends, or the beginning of a crush, or tolerance, or something else?

I had always been able to project whatever emotions I had wanted onto Kagome, because she never showed any strong feelings around me, and I almost never saw her at all, after she started going to the Feudal Era. There was never that doubt, and a way to imagine that it could actually be _real_, more than a fantasy.

I felt stupid and childish.

I had no chance with her. She was in love, and not with me. He (maybe) loved her. They were designed for a perfectly-ever-after. I was not.

Despite all my previous protests, I had the same sort of stupid high school-crush on her that half the guys in the class did, and probably a few other girls, and most of the girls had on Hojo and that boy two classrooms over with the glasses and the girly hair.

It was still _love_. I had to believe that, at least. I still need to, I think. It was puppy-love, maybe, but I did love her, truly and deeply, if a bit shallowly at the same time, and it's love, so I think it's allowed to contradict itself like that at least a little.

oOo

It took me some time to figure it all out. It wasn't so much that it was difficult as I was in denial.

I started to fade out of their world.

It was subtle, but I was a little more transparent, my voice sounded like it was further away than I was. Miroku noticed it first, and then everyone did, myself included. Things looked less… vibrant. Less real.

A few days after the ending of the second week, I disappeared entirely.

oOo

I woke up two (or so) days after that in a hospital. I was solid, and back in my own time. My parents were in the room, and when I shifted and moaned—I had been _trying_ to talk, but my body wasn't having it—they snapped around and hurried to my bed. My mom was sobbing, and my dad was teary.

Later, I'd find out that I had been comatose the entire time I'd been gone. My spirit had left my body—all that the charm, even with my blood and tears, had been able to move—leaving it with nothing to animate it.

When I hadn't come out for anything, food or water or the toilet, and with utter nonresponsiveness, after a day or so my parents had come in to check one me. They had found me unconscious on my desk, eyes wide, blank and staring and mouth open, breathing regular but faint and slow, as if I was asleep.

The doctors hadn't found anything wrong, but they had been waiting for tests to come back that they expected to show a cause.

They never did find it, but I suppose "active charms sending your soul off to wander around the feudal era with the love of your life" isn't covered in medical school.

I talked it all over with Kagome, once she managed to return—she's the one who looked over the charm and figured out what had happened.

She also helped me figure out what it was that had made me return to the right time; I had assumed that the charm had just worn out, but no, apparently not.

In her words, "The focus the charm latched onto—what you were thinking of when it activated—stopped working. I have no idea why it sent you to me… Maybe a school project? Were you thinking of the Feudal Era? Maybe it was just broken—it was very old. I'm amazed it worked. Tell me, do you think Yuka likes Hojo?"

From what she told me, I figured the rest out: I had given up on One True Loves. Or at least, the fact that my One True Love was Kagome. That was the focus, and it had brought me to her, and I had realized that it was futile. That she loved somebody else more, and that she definitely wasn't interested in me _that_ way.

I had grown up, in a way.

Needless to say, I hadn't wanted to tell her the details of my fixation. That was one thing I had neglected to share during our time together. I'm not sure if I'll _ever_ tell her. I wish I could say yes, but at the moment it's safer to say 'probably not.'

And as for One-True-Loves?

I'm not sure what I think of them, now. I'm not sure if they exist.

Now, I think that maybe love is just true pretty much all the time, in every form, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Mostly, though, I don't believe in fairytale-endings anymore. I don't believe in "And They Lived Happily Ever After," because the most heart-felt romance _I've_ ever seen—even if it does involved Jerkface Inuyasha—didn't have roses, noble princes and sweeping-people-off-their-feet. (Well, Inuyasha _was_ a prince, apparently, but nobility was not a trait of his, and he did sweep Kagome off her feet, but normally that was to cart her around. There _weren't_ roses, though, to be fair, there was precious gems involved.)

oOo

It's been a while since I've seen Kagome. She's still haring off to the Feudal Era every chance she gets to Save The World—good luck, I say. I have had my fill of demons and angry villagers with sticks and rampaging armies.

And as for me… I'm looking for a girlfriend. Sort of. I might just wait, actually—I can only hope things will be easier after high school. But as things are, there are plenty of nice girls in our class. There's one I've started talking to, who seems _very_ nice, and I'm not entirely sure but I think we might be flirting, maybe.

That's my Happy Ending: the girl doesn't get the other girl, the Wicked Demon does, but the first girl's actually okay with that; there's other damsels (with or without distress) out there, really, and not all of them come with complicated backstories—or boyfriends.

Trite as it may be, there's always tomorrow.

--END--


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